Cocoa manufacture



Patented July 12, 1949 COCOA MANUFACTURE Harry M. Hinteman, Jersey City, N. J., assignor of fifty per cent to Hiram Ricker and Sons, Poland Spring, Maine, a corporation of Maine, twenty-four per cent to Harold E. Jones, Cambridge, Mass., one per cent to Frank T. Cotter and one per cent to G. Edward Cotter, both of New York, N. Y.

No Drawing. Application May 18, 1945, Serial No. 594,584

3 Claims.

This invention relates to new and useful improvements in cocoa manufacture. This application is a continuation-in-part of my application Serial No. 453,555, filed August 4, 1942, now abandoned.

The customary cocoa or chocolate dessert, candy, beverage or the like is produced by cooking, boiling or brewing cocoa powder in water. This is true Whether the drink is consumed hot or cold, for chocolate syrup used in the making of cold drinks is cocoa and sugar boiled into a syrup. Heretofore, chocolate suitable for mixing with cold liquids Was made by dehydrating boiled cocoa.

The object of the present invention is to produce a cocoa powder from which a palatable and healthful drink or other food can be compounded Without passing through a stage of cooking, boiling or brewing in hot liquid. My roasted but otherwise raw cocoa, i. e., cocoa powder which has previously been cooked, boiled or brewed in hot liquid, may be stirred into cold water or milk to make a drink or syrup; it can be added dry to an ice cream mix, etc.

The cocoa powder is produced in the following manner:

The cacao beans are first roasted for about half the customary time and then shelled in the usual manner. For instance, where customarily thirty minutes roasting would be required in a stationary roaster, I roast for only about fifteen minutes.

The partly roasted nibs are prepared for a second roasting, i. e., heat treatment. For this purpose they are loaded, e. g., into a roaster having a closed rotatable cylinder. While the paddles customarily provided in such roasting cylinders are working, but before the heat is applied again, a solution is poured into the cylinder on the nibs. It is an important feature of my process that the nibs be permitted to soak up the solution for a short period of time,- of the order of one-half hour, before the second heating is started.

In the usual Dutch roasting process, alkalizing takes place in a separate container and is continued usually until fermentation starts. The nibs become so thoroughly saturated with the alkalizing solution that, when taken out of the alkalizing vat, they must be first dried before being placed in the cylinder for the second roasting.

As distinguished from such alkalizing Dutch process, I place the nibs directly into the cylinder of the roaster and there apply a solution for the short period of one-half hour or so. As will be brought out below, the second heating is started with the solution in the cylinder. The nibs are not removed from the solution and they are, of course, not dried before the second heating is started.

The solution which I have found satisfactory is more than an alkalizing solution. For a batch of four hundred pounds of cacao nibs I use an alkalizing substance such as eight pounds of monohydrated crystals of sodium carbonate dissolved in twenty-four quarts of hot Water.

However, in accordance with the important feature of the invention, I add to the solution a substance having an acid reaction as well as certain specific inherent chemical properties. Good results were obtained by adding twelve to sixteen ounces of sodium potassium tartrate (Rochelle salts) as the particular reactive substance of this invention. All or part of the Rochelle salts may be replaced by tartaric acid, argols, or potassium bitartrate. Part of any one of the three substances containing the tartrate radical may be used.

The above-mentioned substances may be added to the solution on a chemical equivalent basis since they react probably as acids, or acid salts, on the basis of the valence of the tartaric product.

The roasting and alkalizing alone, nor their combination, will produce the novel result that I obtained by the addition of a substance having a tartrate and/or a tartrate-like reacting radical.

I have found that when any of the abovementioned substances was added to the solution, then the final product had the characteristic odor and taste which are customarily produced by tar trates, and the cocoa or chocolate made from the product had the characteristic new taste above referred to.

In the claims I shall refer to all the abovementioned substances that are added to the solution as tartrate reacting substances, be they straight salts, acid salts, or acids. It is possible, of course, that a substance might be found that is not scientifically classified as a tartrate but which will give this same tartrate-like reaction and still produce my improved cocoa or chocolate products.

After they have imbibed the solution for about one-half hour as above stated, the nibs are heated for a period of the order of one and one-half to two hours without removal from the solution. The length of this second heating operation varies with the quality of the cacao beans used and with the color desired for the final product. Care should, of course, be exercised to control the heat so as to prevent burning of the beans.

It is impossible to specify temperatures because Certificate of Correction Patent No. 2,476,092. July 12, 1949.

HARRY M. HINTEMAN It is hereby certified that error appears in the printed specification of the above numbered patent requiring correction as follows:

Column 1, line 21, after the Word has insert not;

and that the said Letters Patent should be read with this correction therein that the same may conform to the record of the case in the Patent Office.

Signed and sealed this 29th day of November, A. D. 1949.

THOMAS F. MURPHY,

Assistant (Jammissz'oner of Patents. 

